This transcript was generated from the episode’s YouTube captions and lightly edited for readability: filler words and the mid-show announcements have been removed. It may still contain transcription errors.

Are evangelical conservatives on a power grab by supporting Donald Trump. That’s the accusation. We’ll talk about it on the next episode here of The Case for Life podcast, or I should say this episode. It help if I get my sequence right here. Anyway, welcome to The Case for Life podcast. Great to have you with us today. If you haven’t visited our social media sites, please do so and give us a like there and spread the word about this show. We’d love for you to get the word out so we can reach and equip others like you’ve been equipped by watching.

There’s a lot going on right now since the inauguration of the 47th president, Donald J Trump, and it’s really a continuation of a lot of stuff that went on for four years leading up to this last election, where a lot of evangelical leaders on the left people like Russell Moore, Curtis Chang David French and, in some ways, Ray ortland have encouraged the faithful to vote for Democrats. That somehow that is the way to enhance our Christian witness. That if we vote for a guy like Trump, who is a flawed candidate, we’re destroying our qu Christian witness.

In fact, one guy that that wrote me said this: I just can’t believe the extent to which evangelicals are willing to trade a viable Christian witness for power, to grab their own power structures, rather than to be a faithful witness for Christ. And you know you’re going to hear this a lot people saying: well, you know, you’re just trading your Christian witness for political gain by voting for a guy like Donald Trump. And the first thing I want to say is this: how do I gain by voting for a guy like Trump?

Is it my G or the unborns game? Is it? Is it my gain, or is it the gain of children who aren’t going to be forced into transgender surgeries? Is it my gain? Or is it families who are now protected better from migrant gangs that come here illegally? You know I’m voting the way I do, not for political gain. I vote the way I do to love my neighbor. Now look, if you want to have a debate about whether that is really happening and whether we’re doing a good job of that, so be it.

But to just blanketly condemn your fellow Believers as having no principle, having zero spiritual foundation that’s biblical and all they want to do is grab power politically is really nothing more than a broadside ad hominum attack. That also borders on the genetic fallacy, but we take that up later. But the thing in question here is this: are you merely acting for power when you vote to limit evil and promote the good in so far as you can? And the answer is no, and thankfully.

Here’s what I’m very thankful for. In the last election, evangelical support for Donald Trump went up, not down, and I’m glad for this because, quite frankly, I’ve grown weary of these guys on the left that come at us with a holier than thou moral superiority without ever really advancing an argument. They just smear us as saying: oh, you just want power and you’re hurting our witness for Christ. Well, a couple of things about this. Notice this: their target audience is always only one side of the political spectrum.

They claim, in essence, that who we’re hurting are these supposed Seekers out there that would only come to Jesus if we would vote the right way. Why just think of that left-leaning college student who’s got the rainbow hair and the rainbow flag on his backpack and he will not consider Christianity because you, believer, voted for Donald Trump to reduce evil. You hurt the Christian Community by doing that. So the argument goes. But notice, they only target that that guy or gal.

They never ask. The more thoughtful question would, which would be this: how does this work on both sides of the political Spectrum? Let me give you an example: Dennis Prager, a well-known non-Christian conservative Jewish talk show host who has a widely listened to program nationally. By the way, pray for Dennis. He had a very terrible fall back before Christmas and has been hospitalized since then. I don’t know the on his condition, but it’s not good and I’m not sure what the prognosis looks like in terms of both his longevity and his ability to return to radio.

But here’s the thing: anybody who spends five seconds listening to Dennis Prager knows that he’s a very thoughtful guy. This is not a guy who just glibly says stuff. He looks into things. He engages his critics h ly. He’s very? Compassionate. He doesn’t attribute to his opponents the worst possible motives. A good thoughtful thinker is what we would say if you spend any amount of time with a guy like Dennis Prager. Now here’s what bothers Dennis Prager about evangelical Christians: they lack moral courage and they lack moral Nuance.

They aren’t able to look at something and say: how do we weigh the whole situation and promote the good and limit the evil in so far as we can and what bothers him about Christians and has been an obstacle to a guy like him coming to faith in Christ has been the cowardice of a lot of evangelical pastors. So why don’t people like Moore, David French, Curtis, changen and others talk about conservatives who look at people like them as trading their political or getting political power and trading their faith for power? They only the left only looks at us who are conservatives and says: well, that’s what you people are doing, but the sword really Cuts both ways.

Now let me say something else about this. When you vote to limit evil and promote the good politically, there’s this idea out there that politics is inherently dirty. If you practice it on the right, obviously, they are quite comfortable doing it on the left. But why should we believe that? And when people say to me politics is dirty, the first question I ask is: what do you mean by politics? And you know, nobody gives me a good answer. All they do is tell me about all that can go wrong with it.

Oh, people get power hungry and they sacrifice their principles for political gain. Or, you know, people decide that the kingdom of Washington is greater than the kingdom of God, or you know, Christians are too involved in politics and they’re not loving their neighbors enough or sharing the gospel enough. Okay, all of that may or may not be true, but you’re not answering the question. I really want an answer to what do you mean by politics? And let me give what I think is a good, or at least a helpful, definition.

Politics is where the citizen interacts with his community to promote the good of his neighbor. In other words, there’s a convers ation going on about what does a society look like that is flourishing, and when you participate in that conversation, you are engaging in politics. Why is that a bad thing? I’ve yet to hear an answer to it. Usually, again, all people do is cite the possible abuses that might happen. But I think we need to ask: why is politics considered inherently evil?

The fact that people abuse it is a no we don’t disagree on that. Of course politics can be abused. Of course there are candidates and parties that use it to Eng grandis, their own political structures, their own personal wealth or maybe their own agendas. We all agree with that. But why is it wrong to engage in public policy for the benefit of seeing everyone flourish in the human Community? Really, politics at its core is about pursuing the common good, and when you engage for the sake of pursuing the common good, you are acting biblically, you are doing the right thing.

Now, of course, I’ve also been accused of being a partisan hack. Oh you just really. You’re more Republican than Christian. Well, again, I want to ask: what do you mean by Christian? Because often the Christianity that the leftist has in mind is very different than the IAL one we read about in the pages of scripture, and what they usually mean is: you don’t support this or that leftist agenda, therefore you don’t line up with Christianity, and often that takes the form of the assumption that charity and big government programs are synonymous, and they’re not.

There is a debate to be had about how we ought to best care for the poor. Is it best to care for the poor by taxing people and redistributing wealth, or is it best to care for the poor by allowing the economy to thrive so that a rising tide lifts all boats, so that we build wealth for the sake of getting more and more people able to flourish economically? That’s a debate we ought to have, but it ought to be a debate in good faith, not a debate where the left poisons the well and says: oh, you don’t support immigrants coming here, you don’t support open borders, you don’t support welfare, you don’t support taxes to support people that are poor, therefore you don’t love as you should, as the way Jesus would love.

That’s just poisoning the well. Let’s have a good faith discussion about how do we care for the poor and how do we best do that in a way that causes the common good to flourish for everyone. I love what Jay Wesley Richard says. It’s one thing to have a heart for the poor. It’s quite another to have a mind for the poor, to actually care about policies that will make a difference. And we see the same kind of facius thinking come up on abortion when people say things like: well, you know you should be wanting to reduce abortion, not merely making it illegal.

Well, I’ll be honest with you, I do want to reduce abortion, but I don’t want to merely reduce abortion while leaving the practice legal. I mean, we’ve talked about this before. But imagine how crazy it would sound if I were to say: you know, I’d like to reduce racism, but I’d like to leave it legal to Lynch blacks. Well, you would rightly condemn me for my duplicitous thinking here. What a crazy way to think about my fellow human beings, and you’d be correct.

But this is exactly what people do. On abortion, well, let’s reduce it, but let’s not make it illegal. I don’t want government doing that. Well, why not? If The Unborn are human? What’s wrong with passing laws saying you can’t intentionally kill them without offering Just Cause? And, by the way, if The Unborn aren’t human, why do you care about reducing abortion? These are the questions the political left never answers in a way that is compelling or persuasive to me. In the least, the these are things they simply ignore.

Now, as far as political support goes, my support for any political party will be contingent, meaning it will depend on the circumstances and the principles that party Embraces. I would ditch the GOP, tomorrow if they ditch my foundational principles, like loving my unborn neighbor, like upholding the rights of children not to be forcibly, undergoing sex surgeries that their parents want them to have, or if the GOP totally abandons a philosophy of natural rights and Liberties. These are things that, of course, I would not tolerate them doing.

The Democrat Party has abandoned all principle on all of those issues I just mentioned, but the GOP needs to do a better job, affirming them. Okay, I can still work with a party that needs to improve. I can’t work with one that is hellbent on butchering unborn human beings and, pursuing redefinitions of marriage and forcing a moral agenda on the public that will harm human flourishing, not Aid it. So my support is contingent. It is not absolute. So I don’t need to fall for this idea that I’m just a partisan hack and therefore, my political involvement is about myl itical gain.

No, it’s the way. I love my neighbor. Because I love my neighbor, I want my neighbor to flourish and I am convinced he will flourish better under conservative governance than he will under leftist rule. That’s not a compromise. That’s an argument we need to have. If you, as a leftist, think you have a better argument for human flourishing and you can demonstrate that a leftist worldview AIDs human flourishing better than a conservative worldview, have at it. Bring your ideas and arguments to the table, but a smear job against conservative Christians just won’t do so.

What I want to do in the next section: we’re going to take a break here and when we come back I want to look at this question: what does it mean for a Christian to engage politically? We’re going to go ahead and answer that question, and we’ll do that when we come right back.

Hello friends, welcome back. We’re going to look at another question in this segment that we had to tail off on in the previous segment, and that is this: what does it look like for a Christian to engage politically? Now I want to recommend a book to you right out of the gate here that I think will help. This is Natasha Crane’s book when culture hates you, and I like this book because she actually answers the question: what does it look like for Christians to engage politically?

And one of the points she brings out a point I quite agree with is the one we started with in the last segment that when Christians engage politically, they’re not doing it for their own personal political gain. They’re doing it to promote the flourishing of the common good, and their motivation is not raw political power. It’s love for their neighbor, perhaps their unborn neighbor, or a child who has been deemed a trans child that is being forced into destructive surgeries that will harm them for the rest of their lives, or perhaps a redefinition of marriage which harms the flourishing of the home.

Christians are engaging out of love for their fellow man, their neighbor is the Bible would put it not merely for their own political good. So I recommend you get a look at this book, I think she does a fabulous job of explaining why Christians in particular play a role in engaging politically. I want to add to that, though, by saying this: if you look at scripture, you will see, unmistakably, that god holds sovereigns responsible for promoting Justice in human flourishing. That is throughout the old Testament, New Testament and perhaps in the show notes we’ll throw up some scriptures you can look at to cross reference that.

But the reality is, you and I, if we are Bible believing Christians and we want to practice a biblically grounded faith, do not have the option of sitting out elections now. I love the comeback that often comes again, mostly from those on the political left. Well, Jesus never engaged in politics. The Apostle Paul wasn’t political. Well, what a silly response. And let me explain why. Did Jesus or the Apostle Paul live in a constitutional republic like ours, where the people are sovereign?

No, they lived in the Roman Empire, where the emperor was Sovereign. In fact, he held everybody under his thumb. In most cases, you had to worship the Emperor or you’d be killed. That is not the kind of environment where you get to act politically to change things for the flourishing of your neighbor. You’re under dictatorial R rule, you’re under tyranny, almost. You don’t have the ability to act politically. So no wonder we don’t see scripture really talking about this. But on the other hand, I think I could add that Jesus did act politically when he overturned the tables of the money changers in the temple.

He was acting politically. Why? Who was the local authority in Judea at the time? The temple system as executed by the Pharisees and Sadducees, who were imposing their rules on the surrounding locations. And when Jesus overturned their tables, he was sending a very clear message: you are not sovereign here. So I do think we can make an argument that Jesus did act politically. But even if scripture nowhere says that we’re to act politically and I don’t believe that, but say it did it wouldn’t prove that acting politically is wrong.

The biblical characters we read about in scripture did not have the luxury, like we do, of being part of a constitutional republic where we, the people, are sovereign. Now that raises a very important point. If God holds sovereign’s responsible and in a constitutional republic like ours we are The Sovereign who is God going to hold responsible for upholding Justice and loving our neighbor? That’s right us. So when we sit out elections, we’re not piously affirming biblical truth. We are actually negating our god-given duty to love our unborn neighbor, love our physical neighbors next door, love our communities by promoting human flourishing.

This is not a biblical way for us to look at thing things. Now I have heard people who say: all right, so what’s the point of voting when all the candidates are flawed? And you’re right, they are flawed. There are no perfect candidates, just like there’s no perfect preachers, just like there’s no perfect teachers, no perfect parents. And you know that. I mean, if you’re a parent, you know you’re not perfect. You know God uses parenting as a sanc of sanctification tool in ways that I never dreamed possible before I had kids.

Right, well, look, this is always the reality in a fallen world. You don’t get to choose Perfection. It’s not on the menu. Okay, let’s just be set with that. Your choice will always be for a candidate who will promote good and limit evil as best as possible in the current political environment and one who’s going to run the other direction and actually promote evil wholesale. You’re always going to be faced with that troubling tension, but that doesn’t mean there’s not a right answer.

And the right answer for the Christian is this. Engage politically for the sake of limiting evil and promoting the good in so far as you can. That does not mean you’re compromising by voting the lesser of two evils. I think it’s much more accurate to say, as my colleague Kevin Bywater does, that you are voting to lessen evil. That’s a more accurate way to look at this. You are using the voice God has given you in a constitutional republic to lessen evil and promote good for your neighbors.

That’s part of what it means to engage politically. Now there’s another aspect of this we need to look at. Some Christians, even on the political right, will attack those of us involved politically and say: well, when are you going to learn that only the gospel transforms hearts? Okay, I agree. Only the gospel can make dead people alive spiritually. Only the gospel, the saving work of Jesus on the cross, is going to take someone who is spiritually dead and transfer them, as Colossians 1:13 says, from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of God’s beloved son.

No argument on that. But the question is this: the purpose of government is not to save Souls eternally. The purpose of government is to uphold Justice and restrain evil. That’s the purpose of government. And so we have to ask ourselves, then: is it accurate to say that God has only given us one way to do that, and that is through the preaching of the gospel? Look, I agree. Preaching the gospel and having people be converted to Christ is one way to restrain evil in the culture, because if you become a believer and your heart is changed, you will become Sanctified.

Everyone God declares righteous, meaning those he justifies, he also sanctifies. Justification is an immediate event. You’re declared righteous in virtue of Jesus dying in your place on the cross. However, sanctification is an ongoing, lengthy process where, over time and through much struggle and often pain and Rebellion on our part, we eventually become more Christlike. Okay, so it’s true, if you are justified, eventually, your habits, your thoughts, your behaviors and your motivations of your heart are going to more and more line up in a godly manner than they did before you were justified.

Agreed, however, not all people are going to be saved. In fact, I think a reading of scripture that’s accurate would seem to indicate most people will not be justified. So now, what well, God has given us another way to restrain evil in the culture, not only through conversion, but through the practice of civil law, where government restrains evil, in other words. The purpose of conversion is to change the heart and make it open to the working of God where it wasn’t before.

The purpose of civil law is not to change hearts necessarily, though that can happen in terms of certain legislative principles. Rather, the purpose of law is to control the heartless, those whose hearts won’t be changed through the gospel. It’s what exactly Martin Luther King Jr said in a 1962 speech at Western Michigan University. He was criticized. A reporter said, Mr King, when are you going to realize the law cannot make the white man love you. You cannot force the white man to love you by passing laws.

And King said: indeed, you are quite right, sir. The law cannot make the white man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and that matters. Bingo, there it is. King rightly understood that when it comes to heartless individuals who won’t have their hearts changed from in the inside, the law is needed to control their external behavior. When Christians engage politically, we are doing so to not only see cultures flourish, but to control heartless individuals who refuse to have their hearts changed.

That’s why we engage as Christians and why we don’t need to fall for this phony accusation that we just love our political power? I really don’t have any political power. I’m engaging politically for the sake of my neighbor, to see him flourish, or her flourish, whether in the womb or out, and I’m doing it out of love, not my own profit motive. So I think this is very unfair and I think it’s very good that Rank and file evangelicals did not fall for this poisoning of the well that we see from evangelical leaders that lean left.

We didn’t fall for it this time and I’m hoping we never fall for it, and I’m hoping that the people who are promoting this nonsense that we are trading our Christian witness for political power. I hope those voices diminish, I hope their influence shrinks because, quite frankly, they are not advocating a biblical worldview, and I’m very glad that their voice did not Prevail in this election. I think a lot of people look at them and they’re just tired of them. It’s like quit preaching at us.

We’re smart enough to know we ought to promote the good and limit the evil in so far as we can. That’s a pretty obvious moral principle, and when you try to talk us out of it by shaming us into voting for a person like kamla Harris that would promote abortion, evil wholesale. We’re smart enough to see through that. Something’s wrong with your moral compass and it’s good that evangelicals put those Vo? Es out to pasture in this last election. Thank you for joining us today.

I look forward to seeing you on our next episode.